April 16, 2013

Rethinking This Whole Mess, Pt 2

In my last post I asked the question: is economic work necessary or even desirable?

I pointed out that if our GDP were shared out amongst the 116 million families in the U.S. we’d all have an annual household budget of roughly $130,000.

This lead to the question: with our basic needs taken care of what would the world be like if we all got to do what we wanted?

Now, I am sure more than a few of you are thinking “WTF is he smoking?” (I have asthma, I don’t smoke. I make it up by drinking more.) But I expect more from you. All that would be needed to create this scenario are autonomous robots. (At our current rate of innovation, how long will it be before we have autonomous robots? Fifty years? Might not be that long.)

Well, we would need autonomous robots and a change of heart away from each of us being a well of resentment regarding our fellow citizens.

Think about Jordy in the engine room, with all those technicians running around checking up on supposedly automated systems. You can love ’em but don’t trust ’em. Then think about the kid’s teachers, the medical staff (no holographic doctor for me, no way), bartenders, etc. and all of the scientists doing science stuff.

Besides everytime someone in a red shirt beams down to a planet, he/she gets killed so they need lots of spares!